Every Step You Take (27 page)

In all the years that I have lived in New York I never thought that I would get married. Even in this modern and sophisticated city, the notion of two men getting married still seems to be strange to many people. (Though I have to admit, in recent years when I have browsed through the marriage announcements in the Sunday
Times
and spotted a picture of two recently married men, I've sometimes shed a secret tear.) I cannot believe that in my midforties, more than three decades after my father caught me dancing in front of the mirror and lip-synching to “People” from
Funny Girl
, I am finally going to be Sadie, the married lady. I have never been so happy.

The day after Luis and I got engaged I decided to say nothing about my news at school, but I noticed the boys eyeing my ring finger all day. In my last class, when I saw two of them sort of nudging each other, I asked what was going on. One of them approached me shyly and asked about my bling. I couldn't hold back. I confessed that, yes, in fact, I was engaged—and when they all broke into wild applause, of course my eyes filled with tears again. It is an unusual family I have built for myself here in New York, but a close one and a dear one. I explained to the boys how Luis had contacted my friend Johnny Reinhold, the art collector and jeweler whom I'd known since my Warhol days, and had him design a ring with thirty-seven black diamonds set in white gold, and with one ruby on the inside (for Luis). It is an exquisite ring, to celebrate the beautiful life we hope to have together. I know how much my mother loved Luis, and I only wish that she could be alive to share in this happy moment, too.

Everything in life can feel so haphazard and arbitrary at times, but as I get older and as I examine things more carefully I am beginning to realize how beautiful and complex our relationships become over the years. I can see this both in my family of origin with its sprawling clan of aunts and uncles and cousins that still lives primarily in the western territories where I was born, and in my eclectic adoptive family of NYCB colleagues and other friends here in New York. Over the years my two branches of family have intersected and intertwined in many ways, and members of each branch have been with me through many of the challenges and triumphs, as well as the trials and disappointments, that life has dealt. Now that we have a house in New Mexico that we visit when we can, the various relationships in my once very separate worlds of dance and family seem to be cross-pollinating more and more. I find it fascinating the way love and trust and acceptance and forgiveness grow with and through the important relationships we forge in life, and how even occurrences that may at first feel like happenstance often become part of a profound and beautiful design. As I write this I am reminded of Pop's story of how he and Mom first met in a bar that played salsa music, and how he knew right away that they were meant to be together. Life can be so haphazard—and it also seems that, in my family at least, it can be a risky move to visit bars. If you step out for a quick drink with a friend you may wind up changing your entire future. In my case, not a day passes that I don't thank God for my One Last Nightcap at the Park.

W
HEN
L
UIS AND
I were first living together in our tiny studio apartment, we used to throw small dinner parties for friends all the time. But the year I retired from NYCB we decided to try something more ambitious—a New Year's Eve party for twenty-two. We moved all of our furniture into the hallway, rented two twelve-foot tables, blocked off the kitchen with a curtain we nailed up, and sat everyone formally.

I remember it being one hell of a night. We served scallops with two sauces, filet mignon with Luis's gorgeous demiglace and morels, sautéed green beans, and Gruyère scalloped potatoes with tons of cream and garlic. For dessert we had crème brûlée. After dinner we all danced until the sun came up, and then we collapsed. It took us about a week to clean up the mess, but it was judged by all to have been a fine way to launch the New Year. So fine, in fact, that Luis and I have hosted a similar party every year since. The main entrée changes from year to year—sometimes we do a roast lamb or a beef Wellington or a turkey instead of filet mignon—but one dish that remains a constant is the Gruyère scalloped potatoes. Rich, creamy, and oozing with cheese, this dish makes any meal seem significant. People can never get enough.

______

SERVES 8 GENEROUSLY

This is a recipe that I have been making for years, but recently Luis showed me a great shortcut. You place the sliced potatoes in the cream before it's scalded and start the cooking process on top of the stove, and then transfer them to an ovenproof casserole, add cheese, and bake.

2 cups heavy cream

4 pounds russet potatoes

6 cloves garlic, finely minced (a lot more if you love garlic)

2 teaspoons salt

1 teaspoon ground white pepper

A pinch (just a pinch!) freshly grated nutmeg

½ stick butter, softened

2 cups grated Gruyère

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

In a large pot, carefully bring the cream to a slight simmer, and then turn off the heat.

Peel the potatoes and cut them into about ⅛-inch slices (you can slice them thinner if you happen to have a mandoline, but never, ever use the slicer attachment of your food processor). Drop the sliced potatoes into the scalded cream as you work, to prevent them from turning color. Add the garlic, salt, pepper, and nutmeg with the potatoes and cream, and mix well with your hands.

Spread the butter all over a large ovenproof casserole to grease it, and pour in the potatoes and cream mixture. Top the assembly with the Gruyère, cover the casserole with foil, and bake for about 1 hour. Remove the foil, and continue baking for another 45 minutes—if the top starts to go past the “golden brown” point, cover with the foil again.

You'll know the gratin is done if you pierce it in the middle with a knife and the knife pulls away with no resistance. It's preferable to let it cool for about half an hour so it won't be too runny—but I have never known anybody to object if this is not possible.

NOTE:
For fancier presentations or do-ahead dinner parties, let the gratin cool to room temperature, and refrigerate it overnight. The next day, you can cut the gratin into squares or ovals using a cookie cutter and wrap them individually in foil. To reheat, place them on a greased sheet pan in a preheated 425-degree oven for about 30 minutes. They will hold their shape beautifully and you can plate them easily.

______

When you get, give…. When you learn, teach
.

—A
NNIE
H
ENDERSON
, M
AYA
A
NGELOU'S GRANDMOTHER

W
hen I think back on my retirement performance on June 19, 2005, I often find myself in the moment when Wendy and I were getting ready to go onstage for our last performance together, dancing the pas de deux from
After the Rain
, the ballet Chris had choreographed on us only six months earlier. Operating on pure adrenaline—flying through costume changes and getting quick massages for cramps in my hands and legs between ballets—I had already danced Jerome Robbins's
West Side Story Suite
, Peter Martins's
Barber Violin Concerto
, and Lynne Taylor Corbett's
Chiaroscuro
. I had two ballets to go. I wasn't sure what would happen.

Wendy had acknowledged by then, in both media interviews and in our own conversations, that she felt “shook up” about the end of our partnership. I felt “shook up,” too, and especially so at that moment. For a dancer, the process of performing can be so unpredictable and tumultuous, and so many of the emotions that go coursing through the Bermuda Triangle of body and mind and spirit are unavailable to the tidy world of spoken words. But Wendy and I had found a language for sharing our emotions, and a way to float in and out and around the physical and spiritual beings we each encompassed, allowing our two beings to merge into one. I doubted I would ever again find an experience like the one I was about to share with Wendy, one last time, and the finality of that fact and that moment seemed almost incomprehensible.

Wendy and I stepped onstage, and as we stood there waiting for the curtain to go up, I hugged her. She hugged me back. I said to her what I had always said to her before we began, “It's going to be a different story tonight.” And she said back, as she had always done, “I will meet you there.” The curtain lifted and the moment we began to dance I knew that I had nothing to worry about. Wendy and I stepped into the world where music and movement meet, as we always have, and we danced a new story—a story that existed only once, right there on that stage, in that moment of time.

As I finished my last, tender, heart-wrenching pas de deux with the sublime Wendy Whelan I got a glimpse of the whole company standing in the wings, waiting to join me for the fifth and final piece, the “Royal Navy” section of George Balanchine's
Union Jack
. I tried not to think about the fact that this was the last time I would share the stage with all of my amazing colleagues, who had become dear friends and my surrogate family here in New York, but it was such an emotional moment for me as I changed into my little sailor suit backstage and then headed out. My fellow dancers and I threw ourselves around the stage with wild and giddy abandon, on the verge of giggles and tears all at once it seemed. We did our big leaps and turns, and we waltzed and horn-piped and jigged our way through the killing emotion of it all—and then, with a robust finale from the orchestra pit, it was over. The audience was roaring, an avalanche of flowers was descending upon the stage, everyone was in tears. As I stood there, numb with sadness and so many other emotions, I looked out once more to find my family in the nearby orchestra seats, and once again caught my mother's eye and basked in her smile.

A few minutes later, when I finally got to give my mother and father a hug backstage, my mother lingered in my arms, leaning against my chest. “I'm exhausted,” she said, tears running down her cheeks. “I was sending you all my strength.” I could feel her exhaustion, and I knew that what she said was true. She guided me through this day as she had guided me, even from a distance, through almost every step of my life. I straightened her wig and the two of us giggled while crying into each other's necks, weeping as if I had just fought a world war. And then, though I have never been one to brag, I granted myself my own highest praise. I smiled at my parents and said, “It went well.”

The infinite potential for creativity that dance offers is what has fascinated and nourished me for years, and it was the unparalleled thrill of expressing such creativity moment by moment onstage that I most dreaded losing on that June night when I retired as a performing dancer. Would I have the appetite and the openness and the enterprise to find another pursuit that would let me tell a different story every day? Would I have the good luck to find people like Wendy and Heather and Darci and all the other gifted dancers I had worked with over the years, whom I could love and trust and with whom I could share the wonder of it all? And if the answers to the first two questions were no, would I be able to stand it? In the months leading up to and immediately after my retirement, all of these questions seemed so upsetting I didn't let myself think about them much. I kept my head down and marched forward.

But one of the things I have discovered since retiring is that some of our most important lessons in life can only be fully absorbed in hindsight. I can see now that during all those months when I thought I was avoiding the tough questions about my future, I was also gathering answers to those same questions. I remember a period when Luis and I were first together, for instance, when we would sometimes argue the comparative merits of ballet versus opera. Luis is a huge opera fan, and I, of course, at that point at least, was ballet all the way. I did not understand Luis's obsession with opera—I was used to seeing gorgeous bodies dancing around, creating impossible visions. And I particularly didn't understand his obsession with Wagner. As a result, when he decided early in our relationship to take me to my first Wagner opera—
Tristan und Isolde
, an opera that runs a marathon five hours—I was very dubious. I didn't have a clear idea of what I was about to experience, but I was quite certain I wasn't going to like it.

Five hours later, when the curtain fell after the final aria, I was completely overwhelmed with emotion. I was shaking and tears were running down my face. The beauty of the singing and the glorious sound of the orchestra had taken me completely by surprise and had moved me deeply, both emotionally and physically. I was amazed at the magic I had just witnessed, and stunned by the talent and stamina the artists had displayed. Within the passage of those five hours I had come to understand the beauty of opera, and appreciate the hard work and purity of expression it must take to reach a level of artistry such as I had just seen.

The feelings that overcame me at that performance of
Tristan und Isolde
, I realize as I recall the experience now, are almost identical to the feelings that overcame me when I watched Peter Martins lead Suzanne Farrell onto the stage to perform the second movement of
Symphony in C
on the day of Balanchine's death. And this simple discovery—that is, that different experiences in life can be linked by the quality and the kind of emotions they evoke—is both amazing and liberating. It suggests, among other things, that there are many different paths to many different fine places in life.